


Gimli's Spell

by blueleaf_les



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M, Poetry, gimi's multiclassing warrior and bard, guard your elf, orc killing competition, pellenor fields battle, the prince of mirkwood is not amused, wods of power
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:53:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24270001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueleaf_les/pseuds/blueleaf_les
Summary: Gimli casts a Spell on Legolas and thanks to that the Prince of Mirkwood becomes his secret weapon.
Relationships: Gimli (Son of Glóin)/Legolas Greenleaf
Comments: 2
Kudos: 48





	Gimli's Spell

There was forty-four and then there was a stop, and Gimli heard no more, save his own “forty-nine” shouted with his shrill voice. He stepped away from the orc carrion that fell under his axe and looked around for the Elf who cost him so much emotions.  
“Legolas!”, he shouted, through the dense noise of the battle and the shriek of the dying Nazgul. “Legolas! Forty-nine!”  
“Forty-five!”, he was answered. “Here, Gimli, come quick!”  
Immediately he ran forward, fearing the unknown note in the voice he knew so well. He found Legolas tearing his arrows from the fell orcs. His quiver was again being filled, and his shirt and cloak were soaked in orc blood.  
“Gimli, you must guard me!”, he demanded, pointing with an arrow towards a cloud of dust that gathered in the other point of Pelennor. For Gimli it was too far to be of any significance, but he suspected that the raised filth meant a re-grouping of the orcs, or a new regiment or some other peril.  
But there was no point looking, since his sight could not pierce it. He helped refill Legolas’s quiver.  
“What’ye up to?!” he coughed, when they could not fit not a single arrow more into the quiver and Legolas, finally overcoming his loath towards orc arrows, shred a full quiver from a corpse’s arm.  
“They want to cut Aragorn out! We must stop them! He’s got not enough people by him”  
“Two against so many?!”  
Legolas looked at him with widely opened eyes that shone so brightly it made him shiver. Never before had Gimli seen an Elf so agitated.  
“We have to break out to this position, it’s a perfect spot for the archer”, Legolas’s gaze intensed as he spoke. “We’ll stand at this, I’ll be shooting and you’ll guard me, we MUST do it! Aragorn needs help, now!”  
They ran to the narrow cliff Legolas had chosen, the one that hung above the lower part of Pellenor. Gimli grasped the idea at once: there the archer could stand much higher than his prey, uninterrupted. But the perfect location had one drawback: there was no escape from it but deep down, to the neck-breaking, once the enemy would discover the shooter, had he no guard to bar the access to him with his axe and body.  
“You’ll pass my count, Elf!”, Gimli grumped, sprinting after Legolas.  
“I would anyway! Count my arrows and add them to my score already!”  
“No way! And remember, the big animal still only counts as one!”  
But they were already noticed and Gimli could be sure his harvest would be plentiful. The orcs they drove away from the Rohirrims’ way a little while ago reformed the line and were striding towards the cliff with great pace. Legolas seemed not to care for this danger and flew to the edge of his shooting range, and adjusted his bow without looking back. He trusted to be protected. Gimli took his position rather close to him - too far in the reckoning of his wish, too close for a wise judgement of his situation. He had almost no space to back off, no more than ten meters, but this was necessary to make the orcs come in twos at the most. Or threes. The cliff was not so narrow as he had judged.  
“Forty-six!”, cried Legolas, when his bow sang again. The game restarted.  
He saw clearly now - though his eyes ached as if living fire was in them - that a fresh company of the enemy's breed was creeping at Aragorn’s back. He could tell exactly the signs carried by the orcs and he loathed to have to soon touch the arrows made by such foul hands. But he desired vengeance more than he detested anything else. The Nazgul was fallen, the Nazgul was fallen! - The Nazul was fallen and hope was come, a little beam of hope was come!  
Before he let the next arrow cut the air dense with cries, clamour, death and dirt, he glanced left to raise his heart with the sight of burnt ground onto which the Witch-King had been quenched. That was his end. Eowyn stood upright above the remnants, her cloak and hair glowing, her armour shining. The songs will always remind of her deed. Legolas felt uplifted. He would always remember the Witch-King Slayer, with her sword and stern face, loving death, detesting fear. It undeniably gave him strength and he wished he could report the sight to Gimli. He also saw Merry fallen onto the ground, hurt but alive. This at least he conveyed to his friend in a short notice, having neither elaborate words, nor time to search for them in the dialects of Sardinian known to him. Theoden’s peril, as inevitable, bothered him not and he decided not to mention it for a while. He finally directed his gaze towards the host that dared to encircle Aragorn’s position.  
“Fifty-two!” Gimli shouted, brightened up by the news of Merry. The three orcs that dared to run in front were slain and barred him from the others. He stepped on the corpse and raised his axe to show it to the rest of the enemies, who hesitated, seeing an alliance most unlike.  
From the union of a broad-shouldered Elf whose eyes cast blazing lightnings, with a deadly bow higher than himself, and a metal-clad Dwarf wielding an axe ornamented with precious shining stones, whose hair glowed despite the dusty air and whose voice was proudly echoing in their ears, they could read their peril.  
“Fifty-two, and much more will I send to the abyss, if you do not back, filth!”, he addressed the assaulters in a voice deep and far-reaching. “Back now, and run for your lives if each second is dear to you, for I shall ride after you and unmake you! I will free your horrid heads from your nasty necks and skeevy shoulders! If you wish for a death quick and sudden to shorten your vile life, I invite you to take one step more and taste my axe!”  
The orcs stood still in an undecided silence, holding heavy armour, grunting and growling. They were waiting for a command, peeking at the biggest beast. Thanks to that Gimli observed the leader: a huge creep with rotten face and fiend claws.  
“Forty-seven!” Legolas reported, for the second arrow missed the orc-head by an inch and it was only the third one that finally gave him a point. He noted in memory that the wind blows stronger.  
“Naay, none of you dare?!”, Gimli continued, shaking his axe so that the orcs could observe the black blood that covered the metal. “You carrion! You grotty uglies! Fear is over you, and very rightly so, for Gimli son of Gloin, the Dwarf of Erebor stands before you, and him as a mere guard for the Elven Prince of Mirkwood, whose bow sings a song of woe for you! Have you heard him?! Forty-seven of the likes of you has he already demised! Once he has dealt with your wretched kin down below, he will be come to your very doom and you shall perish! If you wish not to meet his eyes’ deathly glare, beware! Beware and lay your heads before his feet! Either you attack me or your master devours you when you seek refuge near him, if I do not reach you with my axe before or the Elven arrow does not find you! It is death for you anyway, choose therefore according to your liking!”, he assured his feet on the carrion, for it seemed to have moved.  
“Elf!”, shrieked the orcs. In their eyes filled with fear Legolas rose to the range of Elven Lords of the Second Age, and Gimli’s voice alone achieved that.  
“Elf or no Elf, slay the archer!”, the leader commanded. “Slay the archer, say I!”  
“TRY, YOU VILE COWARD!” Gimli's wrath rose to such a level that he omitted the poetic alliteration. His face went red with rage and his voice rose with the desire of vengeance. Shouting his lungs out of his larynx, he assaulted the leader. But his two guards stepped in front and shielded him. Gimli dealt with them at once, adding stones to the carrion-wall he was building.  
Hearing all of this, Legolas added another point to his count of fifty. Arrow after arrow, he was getting calmer. The host he was attacking slowed the pace, trying to identify the source of the death’s darts. They were therefore an easier aim and less of a danger to Aragorn, who was still unaware of their coming, but gained time to notice them. So he took his breaths long, focused his eyes on single targets and left arrowhead after arrowhead inside them. Gimli’s words strengthened him, though they gave him no comfort - nay, ambition rather. Fifty-six, fifty-seven - fifty-eight, he wanted to prove himself worthy and great as he was named.  
“Come on, crows! Come on, cowards!” Gimli jumped on the top of the carrion-pile he made to gain height and space for his axe. Legolas was wearing a dear helmet, but it would be rather unfortunate to strike him in the head with the heavy hatchet. He was not giving place to the orcs. “Sixty-one of you have I so far slain! Is that not enough for ye?! Come on now and be rewarded with the stroke, or imagine what will become of you when the Elven Prince directs his eyes of light on you! Remember that he’s here to take his vengeance on those who brought fire to his woodrealm! The malicious memory of each hurt bough, each green leaf torn from the young branch he will cleanse with your blood! For the wrath of Mirkwood lives in him and finally demands sacrifice! Spiders fear him, the arsonists of your kin are clad in his arrows like hedgehogs, Isengarders fled from his sight into the arms and armoury of the Rohirrim so as to avoid his pierce! Beware for he will soon be come!”  
“Slay the archer!”, growled the leader, who somehow avoided the struggle and kept back behind, not daring to show within Gimli’s reach. “Find a bow!”  
Gimli hoped Legolas heard it and knew what awaited them now. He decided to distract the enemy and swiftly took a spear from a dead hand of an orc, having no shield behind which they could hide. He could not obtain one since the orcs had them not; their master had not bothered to supply them. They were merely meat that could be spared.  
“Find yourself under the assault of Erebor!” he roared and directed the spearhead towards the leader. His orcs were poorly covered and armed, but his neck was hidden under a metal coat with dreary spikes. The spear did not hurt him, but it made him back off. Gimli gasped, for he saw that it was not a bow for what the orc leader called, or what the orcs found instead. It was a long log that was going to be used as a battering ram, to push them both down to the sure neck-breaking.  
“Legolas!”, he called, forgetting the title of the Elven Prince that he scared the orcs so much with. “Achtung!” the Dwarven command was the only one he could think of right now.  
The orcs made way for the ram, but it has not come. Gimli saw that, hearing Legolas’s long, wild yell, they froze - and fear came over them.  
As his arrow (seventy!) flew down, Legolas turned around immediately, screaming with all the force he had left. He made the most horrid expression, and charged, adjusting another arrow to the bowstring. One he could spare before he would return to the defence of the King.  
“The Elven Prince!” Orcs shrieked with fear, seeing an Elven arrow going through the leader’s head. The helmet’s gap for the eyes was big enough for the Elven arrowhead. Black blood flowed, and Legolas held his bow firmly, still yelling, drawing his long knife in the other hand. The orcs saw a strange light in him, a silver glow around his widely-opened eyes casting frost and blaze. The spell of Gimli’s sure words made them imagine the danger that was not there; all Legolas was doing was stare, but he rose in their minds - and his howl sounded like horror. They could not stand the unknown peril, being already exhausted and overwhelmed with fear of their own master. They fled, scattering all around. Gimli followed and Legolas returned to his post to finish off the remains of those who assaulted the King.  
“Eighty!”, he heard from behind, and answered:  
“Seventy-two!”  
The game went on.


End file.
